Archives

Categories

Meta

Tag: animal wisdom

What do you want transformed in your life? Usually we want to see the bigger paycheck, better body, happier (or different) relationship. Or maybe your desires take more of an inward groove. Being more compassionate towards yourself and others, having a quieter mind, increasing confidence. Whatever drives you, bringing Peacock’s transforming energy into your life can help create that dreamed of shift.

Only with Peacock, the practice of alchemy begins with releasing in order to receive. Releasing old boundaries, habitual emotional reactions, stagnant self-esteem, toxic self-talk. It’s about catching negative tendencies and patterns as they arise. Breathing fresh energy into the musty, overstuffed corners, closets and cupboards of your mind.

Peacock’s medicine penetrates so deep into human consciousness that it could fill a multi-volume encylopedia. Googling “peacock symbolism” brought 1,740,000 results. (Nothing so stupendous for the female peahen, which showed a paltry 387,000 results, like why would we care. Except that minus peahens there would be no peacocks.)

The Eyes Have It

Over millennia, the peacock’s magnificent plumage has become associated not only with astonishing beauty but the spiritual mysticism of grace. The eye of the peacock feather “symbolizes the power of creation.”

Traditionally, Indian gurus and swamis hold a wand or large fan made of peacock feathers when they give darshan for their devotees. The Sanskrit root of darshan means “to see,” as seeing a holy person—or even the image of that person or a deity— is highly auspicious and bestows great merit upon the seeker (Wikipedia).

In India, where it’s the national bird and considered sacred, the peacock is associated with Lakshmi, goddess of good fortune and all forms of prosperity from material to spiritual. As devotees approach the master’s chair and bow, they are bopped lightly with the wand on their heads and/or shoulders. I have been bopped like that, on more than one occasion by my guru.

It’s an indescribable feeling not unlike a first kiss or a mind blowing orgasm. It’s being held in the still point where intimacy and infinity merge.

Understandably, the ancient Greeks considered the eyes of the peacock’s feathers to symbolize omniscience and celestial wisdom. As yogini and blogger Catherine Schweig has written, “the image of a peacock displaying its fan of feathers has been as cherished as a rising sun, a picture of the heavenly constellations in the sky, a hundred eyes and the wheel of immortality, just to name a few.”

Name Your Poison

Peacocks can even dine upon and digest the most venomous snakes with ease. That little feat of avian alchemy has still other meanings. As Schweig explains,

“In Tibetan Buddhism the peacock symbolizes one’s victory over poisonous tendencies, and the serpents it consumes represent one’s venomous obstacles and imperfections, or kleshas, which are equally capable of killing us. Successfully digested poison is then naturally transformed into beautiful splendor, as the peacock shows us in his lovely plumage.”

Peacock Pendant

The five kleshas are greed, anger, hate, envy and desire. Klesha literally means poison in Sanskrit. Each one muddies the mind and acts like kryptonite on your spirit. Here’s a mini-meditation you can practice for Peacock’s support in overcoming the kleshas. You can work with each klesha separately as a daily practice on weekdays and all five on weekends, depending upon your schedule. Or if a particular one stands out, spend a week or a month with it before going on to the others.

Begin by getting settled on the floor with legs comfortably crossed. Raise your seat with a folded blanket or a cushion to relax your hips and knees if needed. Or sit on a chair with your feet on the floor. Close your eyes and take several letting-go breaths. Feel your body and mind settle.

Ignorance of your true nature, the divine spark within was said by Gautama Buddha to be the root cause of the kleshas and the suffering they bring. Ask, what gentle steps will lead me from ignorance to knowing who I truly am? Be patient!

Now bring an image of Peacock into your mind. See Peacock stand before you with his magnificent plumage fully expanded, a symbol of the expansion of your spirit into the dimension of change and clarity. Or sense that Peacock is behind you. He’s got your back so that you can step forward fearlessly into freedom.

What’s your take on snakes? Do you find them attractive-repulsive? Maybe you’re the parent of a pet python or two? Love to look but never touch? Take ’em or leave ’em? Basically find them ewww? Whichever way you feel, your response is embedded in humanity’s collective consciousness.

That vibe explodes in your cells and snake-dances in your DNA, spiraling like the twin serpents of the cadeuceus. It slithers up and down your chakras as the Kundalini, the ancient serpent whose ascension eventually takes the spiritual seeker to the highest enlightment, the deepest understanding of the cosmic mysteries. It shimmers in every secret desire you’ve yearned for and it lurks in all those nameless longings that you have ever stuffed down or choked back. Those desires and longings can ultimately drive you to discover who and what you truly are at your core.

Love, Fear or Both

Consider that the eternal animal truth of the serpent is to evoke both love and fear. Because of all creatures, Snake has a truly epic back story.

“Awed for its ease to shed the skin of its old life and slip into a new one, and for its ability to kill with a single bite, the snake swiftly came to symbolize death and rebirth: the cyclical nature of existence itself, as when we see the snake depicted at the hub of the wheel of samsara, or hear it taunting Eve in the Garden of Eden.”

Ananta Shesha holding the Cosmic Egg

Hindu mythology portrays the snake as the massive Ananta Shesha, the sovereign of all snakes, who breathes fire and spews venom, who holds the world on his head. And let’s face it, how many times have you felt that fire-breathing and world-holding (plus a little venom-spewing) were somewhere in your own job description? It’s Ananta Shesha (whose name means the Eternal or Infinte One) that finishes off the world at the end of each four-billion-year cycle—yet is never destroyed himself.

Consider that in your own life many cycles have begun and ended. Relationships. Parenthood. Jobs and careers. Moving away from home or back in. Lifestyles that morphed from one to another. Yet through all the storms of change something within you remained perpetually unchanged. Coming to recognize and befriend your personal Ananta Shesha is to be united with that inner eternal force.

“Snakes were thus imbued with potent transformative energy, mystical powers and the wisdom to unlock the secrets of immortality. They were both feared and adored, linked with both the energies of regeneration and extermination, and connected to dark underworlds as often as they were to divine light.”

The Underworld Outside My Door

One spring morning I stepped outside to find the newly shed skins of no fewer than five pygmy rattlers strewn beside my front door. Despite their littering, I had to thank them for leaving a message: Become attentive to when it’s time to peel away the crusty old layers of your being that no longer serve you. Habits, patterns, perceptions, projections, attachments.

In an earlier post, I looked at the extraordinary relationship of Shiva, the Hindu deity of destruction, and Nandi, the bull who is both Shiva’s companion and mode of transportation. Shiva is also called (among his 1,008 names) Pasupathinath, lord of the animals. In Hinduism, animals represent aspects of our most basic nature, the beasts within us, beautiful or not.

whoa.in

Every image of Shiva depicts him adorned with snakes. They’re encircling his neck and arms or nesting in his matted hair. “Since a snake is one of the most feared and dangerous animals in the world, the garland of snakes around the neck firmly establishes this fact even the snakes fear Him and remain under His control,” according to allsaivism.tripod.com.

Sometimes Shiva is shown surrounded by a cluster of cobras, their hoods forming a fierce halo around his head. Some murtis (deity statues) dispense with Shiva’s image altogether portraying the cobras side by side atop a Shivalingam, so merged are the identities.

Now comes the eternal question: are Shiva’s serpents threatening or beckoning? Do they represent victory over our baser instincts or the highest potential of humanity? In a word, yes.

As the blogger at allsaivism comments, the snake necklace signals to devotees that Shiva, being unaffected by maya or illusion, has conquered desire.

To us mortals that is no easy task. You bop one desire, another rears up to take its place. So if we can breathe deep, laugh a little and take a moment to get centered, we can keep on dancing with the serpent. Anything is possible.

Sources: 1) Catherine Ghosh, “Summon the Snake in You Through Bhujangasana,” elephantjournal.com, January 30, 2012. For more by Catherine, visit her at catherineghosh.com. 2)allsaivism.tripod.com/snakes.html.

Recently I had the great pleasure to be a guest on the “Good Vibrations with Kristin” podcast that runs live streaming over thegreendivas.com. As host Kristin Ace is a lifelong animal lover, she had invited me on for a lively discussion about the myriad ways animals communicate with us. And beyond that, what they mean to us on the deepest level.

To catch the podcast, go here. As Kristin says in her accompanying post:

The animal world shows up to bring us love, mirrors things we need to transmute and moves us into an elevated vibration. They teach us compassion, forgiveness and unconditional love. They open our heart chakras.

How would your life go if you saw it from the perspective of a bull? On one hand, your bull-vision might be your sense of strength and power. Being a mover and shaker. Good so far if you marshal those forces with inner focus, calmness and clarity. On the other hand, your first inclination might be to run in the opposite direction.

The Bull conjures up some pretty hairy images:

— Stomping around a cape-waving matador in a bull ring.

— Stampeding down the streets of Pamplona, Spain, in the annual running of the bulls, on the heels of grown men running to (literally) save their butts.*

— Causing chaos in a china shop.

— And, of course, getting steamed up over the proverbial red flag (or cape), from which comes the expression, “seeing red,” when someone is angry. We’ve all had those moments.

Consider that in each of the above scenarios the Bull is pulled waaay out of his comfort zone—sending a message of stress and its consequences:

— Experiencing anxiety in social circumstances that results in awkwardness, stemming from a sense of not fitting in. (Yes, me too.)

— Feeling boxed in no matter which way you turn. (Look to the ancient Greek myth of the Minotaur imprisoned in the center of the Labyrinth at Delphi.)

— Being so pushed over the edge physically, mentally and emotionally that folks suddenly disappear or pretend to be busy when they see you coming. Yup, been there.

Except Bull-wise those are one dimensional views of a beast so beautiful in form and function that he was worshiped by earlier civilizations such as the Sumerians, Babylonians, Romans, Greeks and Egyptians. The constellation Taurus dates to “at least the early Bronze Age” (good point, Wikipedia). This exaltation was due partly to the bull’s importance to agriculture and no doubt partly to his impressive bedroom skills, given that a bull with a healthy libido is critical to the herd’s producing plentiful offspring and extra milk to sustain them and the entire village.

The Key to Self-Mastery

Now if you were to expand your inner bull’s-eye-view (couldn’t resist) to its widest possible scope, what would it contain? Strength, power and procreative endurance for projects or progeny—check. Yes, however. Hinduism has given us Nandi the Bull to symbolize a deeper and vaster component that tempers all this snorting and thundering stuff: spiritual surrender.

Nandi (whose name means “bringer of joy”) upholds truth, morality, higher consciousness and the path of right action or dharma.

He is companion, mount and chief disciple of Shiva, the major Hindu deity of destruction. They are a formidable pair given that Shiva, with his matted locks, serpent necklace and ash-smeared body, is the supreme demon slayer. Only here, it’s about the slaying of those demonic aspects of the ego that have us in their grip. We look to Shiva to destroy the negativities and self-limiting concepts from which discomfort, doubt, anxiety and above all, fear, arise.

There are tales from the Puranas, the ancient scriptures that recount the doings of the Hindu deities, that center around Nandi’s devotion to the ego-slaying Shiva—and its consequences. This bull has laid his life on the line for his master more than once. What a powerful metaphor for the key to self-mastery: surrendering your ego’s fears, worries and doubts to your higher Self.

When the positive and negative cosmic forces known as devas and asuras teamed up to extract the nectar of immortality from the ocean, they churned up an unanticipated substance: the sticky poison of human karma. The scared deities backed off. Even the scantest touch would “drag the divinity down to the realms of human suffering and ego,” as the legend goes.

Shiva steps forward, scoops up the poison into his palm and begins to drink. His wife, the goddess Parvati, stops the poison at his throat, which turns blue. Then to everyone’s horror, Nandi begins drinking up the poison that had spilled from Shiva’s mouth onto the ground. And he’s perfectly okay. Shiva tells them: “Nandi has surrendered into me so completely that he has all my powers and my protection.”

Wildness and Wisdom

This double boon from Shiva has made Nandi the wild bull into both a warrior of unparalleled skill and the guru of 18 enlightened sages. (Consider that one of the sages was Patanjali who compiled the Yoga Sutra, whose aphorisms are quoted by Yoga teachers to this day.)

The Yin/Yang combination of spiritual warriorship and wisdom is rooted in Eastern disciplines from Akido to Zen. It’s found in great texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. And it appears in Hollywood heroes like Yoda and David “Kung Fu” Carradine.

According to Hindu scripture, we are living in the Kali Yuga or dark age, a cycle of wars and cataclysms in which humanity’s lower qualities like hatred and greed predominate. Nandi empowers you to remain balanced and centered. To uphold your dharma by playing your appropriate role/s in life with strength and open-hearted compassion. And to be firm yet fluid in the face of whatever comes.

Nandi’s statue always guards the entrance to Hindu temples, devotedly facing the statue of Shiva which is placed at the opposite end. Arriving visitors can whisper their prayers into Nandi’s ear. According to this ancient tradition, Nandi can pull Shiva out of his deep meditation and relay their prayers so that Shiva can fulfill them.

Nandi, Shiva and Parvati

How to Meditate with Nandi

You’ll want to call upon Nandi when:

— Wondering what is the right path to take in making a decision.

— Needing to see the ultimate truth of a situation.

— Facing change with strength and flexibility.

— Wanting to release toxic emotions.

Sit on a mat or cushion on the floor, keeping your shoulders relaxed and your spine long. Or sit on a chair with both feet on the floor. Alternately, sit in a favorite outdoor spot. Rest your palms face down on your lap, or place one palm under the other, thumb tips lightly touching. Focus on your breath, taking three or four deep full inhalations and long slow exhalations. Soften your gaze and continue with steady breathing.

Call Nandi to you by bringing his image into your mind’s eye. Be patient! Use all your senses to perceive his arrival.

— When you see, hear and/or feel Nandi’s presence, spend as much time in silence with him as you comfortably can. Like all enlightened spiritual masters, Nandi can impart great wisdom without uttering a sound. Allow yourself to receive the message or teaching he has for you, even if seems like it’s your imagination. (Note: This step can be done before/after or apart from the next step.)

— Whisper your intentions and prayers into Nandi’s ear. Then see yourself looking beyond his head, gazing raptly at Shiva. Know that your worries and negativities have been vanquished. See the clear field of dharmic action. Go forth with clarity and focus. Claim your power!